Carl Honoré's In Praise of Slowness and Activity Level (E4)

Carl Honoré was a journalist rushing through life, reading one-minute bedtime stories to his kids so he could get back to work, when he caught himself and wondered what the hurry was for. In Praise of Slowness is the book that came out of that reckoning, a tour of the growing movement pushing back against a culture that treats speed as a virtue and busyness as a badge. His argument is that we have lost the ability to choose our own pace. On his own summary of the book he defines the alternative: "Slow means being present, living each moment fully, putting quality before quantity in everything from work and sex to food and parenting." The drive to fill every hour and keep moving that he is questioning is, in the Big Five, one facet.

The drive to keep moving is the Activity Level facet

That facet is Activity Level (E4), under Extraversion, the tempo you prefer and how busy you need to be to feel right. A high scorer keeps a packed, fast-moving day and feels antsy when things slow down; a low scorer is at ease with a gentler rhythm. Honoré is writing for a whole culture tilted toward the high end, where speed has become automatic and slowness feels like falling behind. His point is that a fast pace stops being a choice when you cannot switch it off, and the fix is learning to match your speed to the moment rather than living permanently in a rush.

It helps to separate the pace you move at from the drive to achieve, which is Achievement-Striving (C4). A person can run high on both, treating a full calendar as proof of a full life, which is exactly the trap Honoré describes. His remedy is to reclaim the dial, going fast when speed serves you and slow when it does not, so the tempo answers to you. For a high-E4 reader that reframe matters, because the problem is rarely the energy itself; it is the loss of the off switch, and getting it back is what turns restlessness into range.

For a reader placing themselves, your E4 is a fair read on how fast you like to live and how uneasy a quiet, open afternoon makes you feel. High on it and Honoré is not telling you to slow down for good, only to prove you still can, so your speed stays a choice. Low on it and the book mostly validates a rhythm you already trust in a world that keeps pressuring you to hurry. Where you sit on Activity Level tells you how much of your pace you actually control, and we take the facet apart in Activity Level (E4).

Read the book: In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honoré.

See Where You Fall

Where do you actually fall? The 30-facet OCEAN personality test takes about 15 minutes and scores all five domains and the facets underneath them. Take the test

Research Citations